Wang Ming
"Enter the World of Infinity"
Acrylic paint on Japon paper mounted on canvas
Dimensions: H: 39 inches: W: 25 inches
WANG MING WANG Artist Ming Wang, born November 4, 1921, died peacefully on Sunday, June 26, 2016 in Bethesda. Ming Wang was born in Tianjin, China and was a pilot in Chinese Nationalist Air Force during WWII. Artist Wang Ming's journey began in the 1940s. As he worked as an air traffic controller in Taiwan, he became interested in the beauty of the sky. He was a young man then, having fled from Japanese-occupied China in 1939 at age 18. He came to the US for further military training where he met his first wife, the late Suen Chin. In 1949, Wang went Taiwan to escape the Communist takeover of China. He rejoined his wife and young son in Washington DC in 1951. To support a growing family, Wang founded the National Art and Frame shop in Washington DC. He studied art independently and developed his unique artistic style melding modern art with traditional Chinese calligraphy. His paintings, done with a mixture of inks and acrylics on fine paper, are a happy marriage of traditional Chinese disciplines with Western art as it has been handled by Joan Miro and Paul Klee. His works are minimalist and abstract, marked with good design and extremely sensitive use of color. The influence of 1950s American art and abstract expressionism is also clear in his work, and he exhibited with such Washington Color School luminaries as Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis in the 1960s. He later taught calligraphy at George Washington University. Years before the Hubble Telescope began broadcasting images of rainbow clouds and blood red stars, Ming used art to convey what he imagined space to be. His work captured the attention of James Dean, the National Air and Space Museum's first art collector, who purchased two of his pieces. In the 1960's and 1970's, Wang was represented by the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington DC.
1980: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
American Drawing in Black & White: 1970-1980, by curator Gene Baro. “The visitors are invited to enjoy the rich variety of marks and means used in attacking subjects that range from meticulous representational rendering to extemporaneous gesture.” Included among many other artists, were Anni Albers, Jasper Johns, Willem De Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Tworkov, Robert Motherwell and Andy Warhol.
1982: The Washington Post, by Jo Ann Lewis
“His show at the Marvin Center at George Washington University, where he teaches calligraphy, should help clarify the unique nature of his art . ... ‘Independent Reality,’ in which dramatic curves dance across an opened scroll, taking on a life of their own-in any language. The show is filled with the artist’s very special of visual poetry.”
He was included in the exhibition American Drawing in Black & White: 1970-1980, by curator Gene Baro at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. Included among many other artists, were Anni Albers, Jasper Johns, Willem De Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Tworkov, Robert Motherwell and Andy Warhol. Wang Ming was also included in the show Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions Asian American Artists and Abstraction, 1945 – 1970 at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick. The senior curator Jeffrey Wechsler reviewed each artist for this traveling group exhibition, including C. C. Wang, Chen chi...
Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Paper Paintings
MaterialsLinen, Acrylic, Archival Paper
